I have consoled myself with the fact that the 49ers won, if not the Super Bowl, the NFC championship in Garoppolo’s first full season and he’ll be back.

And I have given Patrick Mahomes his due. The kid is 24 and will be a force in the NFL for some time. Hell, he may be the ghost of the great Otto Graham ([Graham]”He is the greatest winner among quarterbacks ever, and that cannot be disputed: seven championships in 10 professional seasons—and he lost in the championship game the other three years.” — Peter King)

Next year Mahomes will be back but so will Jimmy G and Tom Brady appeared in a super bowl commercial confirming that he’ll be back. It will be an exciting season.

But the real show Sunday afternoon was not the Niners or the Chiefs, but some 81 commercials @ $5.6 million per 30 seconds on top of lush production budgets.

I rather hate to be this carping commercial critic, but let’s face it folks, the vast majority of these commercials would only play well in Mrs. Johnson’s first grade class.

They are created by agencies who have clients with seriously deep pockets and no use (or a complete disregard) of surveys or an understanding of the emotional tone of their audience.

I’m not going to review all of the footage that was passed off for commercials on the Super Bowl. It would take much too much time and I would be drained of any sense of positive communication.

But I will touch on two: what I considered the best, and the worst.

Let me start with the worst, first. In doing so, I admit to not having seen every comm single commercial, but I saw a lot. And this one…is representative of many.

A television commercial, or any ad really, should motivate you to want the product or service. That’s what it is supposed to do. Whether $5.6 million or a few hundred dollars the should motivate want.

In this commercial, they are advertising candy.

You should want some. You should drool.

This commercial starts with people talking about some problems in life: Texting too much, spam, government surveillance…and then it switches to footage of lots of people walking down hills into a valley.

There’s a huge hole in the floor of the valley. The people surround the hole and are singing.

A helicopter appears above the crowd and the hole with a huge Snickers bar dangling from a cable. The Snickers bar is dropped into the hole.

The point of the commercial is that there is a lot wrong with the world, the solution to which may be dropping a Snickers Bar in the hole.

To top it off, a couple decides to take a selfie at the edge of the hole. They step out of the crowd, back up closer to the edge of the hole to take the picture, but get too and close fall backwards into the hole.

The commercial closes with Luiz Guzman (you know the short Puerto Rican, character actor) stepping in front of the camera and saying, “The Snicker’s Hole. It’s working.”

Huh?

Give it a watch. What do you think?

So Snickers gets my vote for the worst commercial of the Super Bowl and the biggest waste of money.

The better question is which was the best commercial.

In the one that I thought was the best – and best here is defined as the most persuasive because I personally oppose the product that was being sold, they have scripted a masterpiece.

The commercial was by Verizon for 5G.

You’ve probably heard of 5G to a greater or lesser degree. This is the new wireless protocol that will be carrying your phone traffic (and that of other devices). 5G traffic is much faster than the current 4G that we all use now. There is a huge push by the telecommunications companies to get 5G deployed due to its increased speed, which is going to allow the digital communication to reach many more devices than the exiting protocol.

How much faster?

I’ve read articles that say three times faster and articles that say hundred times faster. I don’t know where it will land, but clearly it’s going to be much faster.

However, many are many opposed to 5G and the telecom industry’s push to deploy it. Over 200 cities in the United States alone have expressed opposition to 5G.

Their opposition stems from the fact that with 5G comes a dramatic increase in electromagnetic energy. This kind of energy is terribly bad for the body. There are a number of studies that show this to be the case but the studies have been brushed off by the FCC that seems to be in an incestuous relationship with the telecom industry on 5G

The problem is that while the 5G communication band is a much higher frequency, it doesn’t travel as far as previous phone signals. It shoots in shorter bursts which means there has to be many more phone towers to relay the increased number of signals from the phones.

With more phones and more signals comes more electromagnetic energy which is tied to a number of chronic diseases not the least of which is cancer.

So there is growing opposition to 5G as people become more and more aware of the hazards the electromagnetic radiation.

Verizon is very clever with the creation of this commercial. They are clearly aware that there is great opposition to 5G. So are government entities that have, we repeat, dismissed the studies that show the tie the connection between 5G and health hazards.

Verizon produced a commercial, which you can watch at the link below here which cleverly pushes a great deal of power and heartfelt good wishes to the firemen, nurses, doctors and other first responders that will get to use 5G.

They make the point that 5G is not what’s important; what’s most important is the dedication, care, and compassion these people have for their fellow man. They and their actions are what is important (which is entirely true) and their dedication and efforts are simply backed up by 5G. The commercial validates these people and only incidentally mentions that it is 5G that enables them to do their jobs.

Check it out.

In the end of the commercial is really more PR that marketing,

I picked this as the best commercial because of all the commercials I watched, this was the most persuasive communication that I saw. It changed my mind. It changed mine from complete opposition to 5G to having a problem, to thinking, there ought to be a way to retain the technology without the damage to human bodies.

I would still oppose its deployment, but would also look for a solution.

Meanwhile, it is abundantly clear to me that Verizon had done their homework before producing this commercial – they had clearly done in-depth market research and fully understood the public’s opposition to the product and produced a commercial that changed minds. And it did so without ever mentioning the enemy line.

Give it a watch let me know what you think.

And if you need to have market research or surveys done for a PR campaign, give us a call. When you know what is in the mind of your prospect, selling ideas is easy to do.

“We took bids on this project, and none of your competitors offered such a short turnaround…. At the same time, your cost was lower than all the competitive bids, again permitting us to move quickly and get more for our budget for this project than we would have afforded from anyone else.” KO Vice President

Best,

Bruce
ontargetresearch.com
818-397-1401